Flaming Pablum

Generation Expensive

Yesterday afternoon, I found myself wandering around the eastern end of SoHo (i.e. just west of Bowery) and was struck by a t-shirt hanging in the window of a shop on the corner of Elizabeth and Prince called Quality Mending, a sort of bespoke vintage outlet, from what I can tell. The shirt in question featured the artwork from Oingo Boingo’s 1983 album, Good for Your Soul (frankly, not their best effort, is you ask me, but whatever). Being a sucker for t-shirts (as slavishly documented in this category: Opinionated Rants About T-Shirts) I decided to go investigate.

They didn’t have too many vintage shirts on display once I made it inside, but I did see a few familiar ones — a distressed tank-topified version of the Ramones’ Road to Ruin design and an old Adam & the Ants model among them, but I was genuinely intrigued by the one below, that was hung in the window facing Prince Street.

Though somewhat written off in Britain as being too poppy to be proper punks (though I wouldn’t suggest they were any more poppy than, say, Buzzcocks or The Ramones), Generation X were a big favorite of mine. I vividly remember the summer of 1981, when my grade school pal Brad played me “Ready, Steady, Go” off their eponymous debut album and it genuinely blowing a new part in my hair. Those insistent drums, surprising harmonies and chugging guitars totally won me over, produced with blunt resplendence by Martin Rushent, who’d also go onto to twiddle the knobs for 999, the Stranglers, Buzzcocks, Altered Images and The Human League. I dutifully raced to the Crazy Eddie on East 57th street (my then go-to for import LP’s) to fetch a copy of the LP for myself.

Even the cover was awesome — a smeary, saturated sepia portrait of the band looking spiky, sneery, leather-clad and ready for a tussle.

The album itself was crammed to the hilt with amazing, urgent tracks — not only “Ready, Steady, Go” (which still gets my blood pumping), but “From The Heart,” “One Hundred Punks,” “Kleenex” (another blinding favorite), “Day By Day” and more. It may have lacked the vitriol of Never Mind the Bollocks, but there was no disputing the blast of reckless, punky energy that was Generation X.

I was, of course, somewhat befuddled to see the band’s vocalist, Billy Idol, suddenly turn up on “Solid Gold” later that summer to sing a comparatively tame rendition of Tommy James’ “Mony, Mony,” but that’s another story.

So, anyway, being a big ol’ fan of Generation X, there I was staring at this excellent t-shirt with the cover art from the 7” single of “Day By Day.” While I already have drawerfuls upon drawerfuls of dumb punk rock-shirts, my curiosity was still piqued. I reached up to look at the price tag dangling just below the collar.

They want HOW MUCH FOR THIS T-SHIRT??

Apparently, the folks at Quality Mending believe this fetching-if-inarguably-weathered garment is worth a paltry $678.00. Yes, you read that correctly — SIX HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS.

I don’t even care if the shirt came off of Billy Idol’s back,….anyone who spends that type of money on a goddamn t-shirt is an abject douchebag.

As much as I love that shirt, to that particularly pungent brand of bullshit, I have to express a hearty Ready, Steady, NO!

Practically shellshocked, I staggered back out onto Prince Street. I happened to glance that all the shop’s vintage clothes (that, presumably, would include the Gen X shirt) are 70% off. That means, I guess, that it’s now priced to move at a mere $203.40

Actually, why don’t you save yourself the $183.09 and get the very same shirt here. You’re welcome.

Let’s pretend this all didn’t happen, shall we? 

Searching for the Gang

A tiny bit of backtracking preamble first…..

For over a decade, I had the distinct honor of working at TIME Magazine, specifically for the News Desk, which put me at the center of the hourglass between the magazine's editorial staff and the network of correspondents around the world. As a result, I was fortunate enough to befriend journalists in virtually every major city across the globe, given that I was the voice on their phone at 3 AM, gently informing them that news was breaking in their backyard and we needed them on the scene. While it came with a somewhat grueling schedule (two overnights a week, which did irreparable damage to my circadian rhythms), it was an immensely gratifying job. Ten years after leaving the operation, I feel a strong, familial kinship with all of the folks from TIME I worked alongside. I miss them all quite a bit.

In any case, relatively late into my tenure at the magazine, a journalist joined TIME’s London bureau, and in my semi-regular dealings with her, I became genuinely amazed to discover that she was married to one of my heroes, that being the inimitable Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill. It seemed inconceivable to me that there was only one degree of separation between me and an iconoclast of British post-punk (especially when Gill was drafted to produce the 2003 album by my beloved Killing Joke). I remain in awe.

In any case, said journalist recently posted a pic on her Facebook page of what I believe to be an exhibition of Anton Corbijn’s photographs, specifically featuring this striking photo of Gang of Four in New York City below (cropped from her original pic).

I scoured the `net looking for another representation of this picture, but have come up empty. I’d love to see a more detailed print of it.

Can anyone name the location?

Here’s a bit of vintage live Gang of Four from 1981…..

 

Eleven Years Later

Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

First Day of Spring!

Yeah, remember this? Turns out I was wrong.

Give'Em the Boot: Redux

Honestly speaking, I would never have expected Dr. Martens — arguably the “go-to” footwear of anyone weaned on British punk rock — to pander to stereotype, dilute the message and/or just plain ol’ get it wrong (but now that I think about it — they’ve done it before). Once upon a time, Dr. Marten just did what they did — make hard-as-nails big, fuckoff boots without needing to suck up to or reinforce their standing with their target demographic.

Looking back, I’m not sure why the British youth first took to Dr. Martens (a straight-ahead footwear company who made sturdy work boots for the common man, so to speak) any more than why mods and rudeboys chose to adopt Fred Perry shirts (Fred Perry, at the end of the day, not being a foul-mouthed hooligan but rather simply an accomplished, championship tennis player). Things just worked out that way, I suppose.

So, while Dr. Martens didn’t intend to manufacture what became the signature footwear of burly British skinheads (and later Punk Rockers and denizens of myriad other subcultures on both sides of the Atlantic), that just simply became their stock in trade. One wonders if they were happy about it, but they couldn’t have been too displeased, as it certainly paid off for them. I don’t believe I know a single fellow music acolyte that didn’t, at one point or another, own a pair of battered Docs. Lord knows my closet’s still full of’em.

The passage of time, however, does strange things. In much the same way fashionistas started cherry picking bits of the sartorial trappings of rock’s countless subcultures for the catwalk — ironic metal t-shirts, spiky bracelets, grungy flannel, etc. — Dr. Martens’ clunky, utilitarian footwear gradually became more accessible, acceptable and no longer relegated to the closets of high school nogoodnicks and goth wallflowers. In short order, willowy fashion models and members of the Cockney Rejects alike suddenly had unlikely common ground in Dr. Marten’s boots.

Here in NYC, Dr. Martens vaulted out of the comparatively grubby shoe shops of West 8th Street and late, lamented 99X on East 10th and into their own comparatively bespoke outlets in SoHo and Union Square. You now see Dr. Martens on the feet of well-paid office execs in pricey midtown bistros and on the feet of stroller-pushing moms. Like most of the other accoutrements of the withering cadaver of punk, Dr. Martens have been subsumed by the mainstream. Sorry, Skrewdriver.

So why am I bothering to exhume all this ancient history? Well, I got an e-mail from Dr. Martens recently advertising their “Core Collection,” featuring pre-“rub-off’ variations. As they describe it…

In the early '80s, US Hardcore musicians and fans customized their Dr. Martens, painting over the original color with whatever struck their fancy. But over time, those hand-painted finishes would wear thin, revealing, layer by layer, the history of a well-worn shoe. Offered in classic smooth leather with a hand-crafted rub-off effect, our Pascal boot salutes the ingenuity of the wearer and the longevity of Dr. Martens alike. Goodyear welted, stitched and sealed, it's made to last long enough to reflect your own history as well.

Alright, so why I am so aggrieved by this? I mean, in 2015, why do I care? I just find it so depressing that Dr. Martens are selling pre-distressed footwear. It’s essentially the same concept as selling pre-faded, vintage t-shirts, I suppose (let alone for a handsome price), that lumpenly seek to broadcast that the wearer “was there, maaaaaan.” I've always hated that. While it’s ultimately the music that matters the most, I've hated to see the accompanying bits of sartorial flourish and visual ephemera cheaply appropriated by folks for whom the points of origin mean nothing. It’s silly, I know, but it bugs the Hell out of me.

Taking that a step even further into the realm of precious punk pedantry, take a look at the image associated with Dr. Marten’s “Core Collection.”

Alright, to the layperson, we see a pair of boots atop an artfully messy collage of vintage hardcore flyers. Closer scrutiny reveals citations of classic West Coast hardcore bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Bad Religion (along with the signature artwork of cartoonist Shawn Kerri, who I’d bet was not compensated for same). Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll see invocations of bands like The Misfits, Corrosion of Conformity and bits of this flyer…..

Not that it matters, but The Misfits were from New Jersey, Corrosion of Conformity were from North Carolina and N.O.T.A. were from Oklahoma. And Stache’s (the venue featured in the flyer above) was in Columbus, Ohio.

What’s my problem?

THIS IS NOT WEST COAST HARDCORE!!!

You’d think they could have paid a little more attention to the details.

Go Ahead and Move to Los Angeles, Chloë

I’ve gone after Chloe Sevigny here a couple of times (see below). I’m not sure why, exactly, but she just manages time and again to irritate the Hell out of me. Yes, I know she’s smart and cool and has good taste and actually knows and likes the bands on her t-shirts and is friends with cool people and blah blah blah, but I just find her to be so cloying.

Her latest stunt is an entirely unsolicited bit of bullshit that’s been making the rounds, that being a “Guide to Being a New Yorker.” Presumably conceived as a hip retort to the whole Taylor Swift nonsense of a few months back, Chloe’s attempt strikes me as just as vapid as Taylor’s and, well JUST NOT FUNNY OR CLEVER ENOUGH. Check it out for yourself.

Yes, I know I recently pointed out that being a native New Yorker ultimately doesn’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, being that so many of the city’s storied movers, shakers and visionaries all came here from somewhere else, but I can’t stop myself from pointing out that Chloe was born in Massachusetts and then raised in Darien, Connecticut. Thus, NOT A GODDAMN NEW YORKER.

One other thought about this….

Not every New Yorker needs to “despise" Los Angeles. If fact, most New Yorkers probably don’t give L.A. that much thought. Moving to California isn’t something your average New Yorker spends a great amount of time ruminating on. That’s a showbiz concern, Chloe, not a New Yorker concern.

And joke all ya want, but knowing your past IS important. Yogurt never will be.

More Chloe....

Just Say Noë
Chloë Vs. the Fashion Goths
Gordon Meets Godard: Exhuming 'X-Girl'

 

Rotten in the City

My friend and fellow crazed location-spotter Chung Wong posted an amazing image this morning, that being the one above of John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten….it seems rather laborious to point that out at this late stage of the proceedings, but whatever) posing in front of the old New Yorker Hotel on 8th Avenue at 34th Street circa 1983. This portrait was snapped in signature style by the great Anton Corbijn.

If I’m not mistaken, this was probably taken by Corbijn around the same era of the wider shot below, albeit snapped from the other side of the Hudson River, placing Lydon in … Hoboken?? Seems like a strange place for him to be.

Regarding the first photo (the erstwhile Sex Pistol on 34th Street), that put him back in the same neighborhood I was scouring a couple of weeks back when I was searching for the Strokes’ loading dock. A further Google search brought up this third image from Corbijn, purportedly taken on May 28, 1983 for the NME.

Am I mistaken, or is Lydon holding a French horn over his crotch?

Much like the Strokes’ spot, this tiny patch of real estate — probably somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen — seems like a strenuously unlikely spot to find. Anyone?

Here’s a bit of Lydon circa `83. 

There’s No Justice, There Just Estus

Apologies for the slowdown in posts. As alluded — and flatly spelled out — in recent entries, I’m currently trying up to swim up from the unchartably depressing depths of unemployment without getting the bends. As of yet, despite some near-misses, protracted e-mail exchanges and the odd promising interview, I have yet to breach the surface, so to speak. While I have an unseemly amount of “free time,” I cannot always justify spending as much time on the blog. That all said, I’ll have some more substantial stuff up here soon. Stay tuned.

In the interim, I thought I’d put this up. I decided to throw in the towel on Christgau’s book. After I posted my piece on his memoir, I decided to actually go read a few of its reviews (I usually avoid reading reviews prior to picking up books I’m intrigued by), and found that I was not alone in my lack of affinity for the revered critic’s unexpurgated bellyflop into what I would call “ambush porn” (in that I certainly wasn’t expecting it). Having read the pertinent portions about CBGB, Television (who he cloyingly keeps on referring to as “T.V.”) and the Ramones, I figured I got all I needed (ick….that then some) from his book. Done and done.

But speaking of the Ramones, having been disappointed in such swift order by Christgau’s book, I went ahead and picked up “Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone” by Marky Ramone. There have already been scores of books published on da brudders, and I must confess to having read most of them, but I figured…what the heck? At the very least, I felt reasonably confident Marky wasn’t going to unleash an impenetrable avalanche of frilly Christgau-speak on me. “Mooncalves” my ass!

Much like his speaking voice, Marky's text is dry and cheeky, but overall the book is refreshingly more engaging than I was expecting. I’m only about halfway into it, currently dealing with the fabled drummer’s days as the nascent drummer of Richard Hell’s Voidoids.

I was genuinely surprised to learn that Marky served in the ranks of yet another band in between his days with proto-stoner-metal trio Dust and the Voidoids, that being the incongruously countrified soft rock of an ensemble called Estus (and what Estus means, I have no idea … maybe Robert Christgau knows?)

Anyway, he mentions recording an album with them, and details an arduous album cover shoot one drizzly morning on an otherwise deserted, rainy Park Avenue circa 1973. He didn’t feature said album cover in the book, so I did a bit of Googling and voila….

That’s Marky and the Estus boys (Marky being second from the right) on what looks like the northwest corner of East 54th Street and Park Avenue, which today looks pretty much the same (see Google streetview grab below)...

Anyway, my curiosity piqued, I dialed up some Estus on YouTube. Suffice to say, I’m glad Marky moved on to punkier pastures. Here’s a taste.

Nine Years Old

My little boy turned nine years old this week. Seems like we brought him home only yesterday. In any case, for a birthday surprise, we took him and his big sister to the Top of the Rock, and I couldn’t help but pay homage to an old favorite Bob Gruen photo of the Clash.

Happy Birthday, Oliver.

Tear It Down

I went back up to my old stomping grounds on the Upper East Side not too long back, and I was frustrated to see the fucking giant, artless, ludicrously priapic monstrosity that is 432 Park Avenue absolutely decimating any remaining semblance of symmetry and proportion to the surrounding cityscape.

It juts like an unsolicited erection out of the horizon, forever dwarfing the majestic canyon of Park Avenue and lording over all like some posh, aspirational version of Barad-dûr, Sauron’s dark tower from "The Lord of the Rings."

Actually, that would be compliment. At least Barad-dûr was architecturally interesting and respectful of the stylistic integrity of Mordor's suitably dour surrounding environs.

A pox on all who reside in her.

My friend Susan posted the below clip on Facebook this morning, offering a surreal glimpse inside this wretched column of avaricious villainy.

Take a look….it’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to being inside it.